Anaheim Statement Continues to Gain Supporters

(The Rev.) George Conger
Posted on: August 24, 2009

The Anaheim Statement endorsed by 34 bishops at the close of the 76th General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., has added two more bishops to its list of supporters.

The Rt. Rev. Charles E. Jenkins, III, Bishop of Louisiana, and the Rt. Rev. Harry W. Shipps, retired Bishop of Georgia, have endorsed the letter affirming their loyalty to the Anglican Communion in the wake of the adoption of resolutions C056 and D025 ending the moratoria forbidding the consecration of partnered gay clergy as bishops and the authorization of rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.

However, Bishop Jenkins also was one of the bishops who voted against D025 but in favor of C056. He later said he voted for C056 because his colleagues had responded well to his plea for graciousness. “I felt I was honor-bound to vote for it because these bishops had done what I had asked them to do," he said. " I felt that the process was a ray of hope for The Episcopal Church.”

In a series of letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and primates of the Anglican Communion written at the close of General Convention, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson have disputed the characterization of the adoption of the two resolutions as having ended the moratoria or a “walking apart” by the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion.

Speaking to the media on July 18 Bishop Jefferts Schori stated the votes were a “truthful attempt to deepen relationships” with the wider Anglican Communion. She added that “in 2009” there are “more and deeper relationships with parts of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion than five or 10 years ago.”

Overseas Anglicans, however, have so far not been persuaded by the Presiding Bishop’s explanation. On July 27, Archbishop of Canterbury released his reflections on the General Convention, voicing a sharply critical view of the votes. Archbishop Williams also took note of the Anaheim Statement, noting that a “significant minority of bishops” had “clearly expressed its intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion” on the issues of human sexuality and the moratoria.

Aides to the archbishop have also been noting the progress of the Communion Partners group of rectors in “loyal opposition” to the “current trajectory” of the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Russell Levenson, Jr., rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, stated the fellowship as of Aug. 11 now includes 66 parish rectors whose congregations number nearly 60,000, ranging in size from his Houston parish of 8,500 members to the Church of the Incarnation in Lafayette, Louisiana with 20 members.

On Aug 17, the Rev. R. Leigh Spruill, rector of St George’s, Nashville, Tenn., and the group’s administrator, explained that the Communion Partners were not a protest group but rather a “missional fellowship committed to reviving classical Christianity” within the Episcopal Church. The group seeks to provide a place for those “committed to remaining within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church,” while also offering “theological and spiritual support” in the anxious days following General Convention, Fr. Spruill said.

“We are not just another group poised to split off,” he noted. “Because of our ecclesiology” as clergy committed to the Anglican way, the group believes that working towards the Archbishop of Canterbury’s goal of building an Anglican Covenant is a “reasonable” and “solid theological place to stand.”

“The Anglican Communion is not an idol for us, but a gift from God,” Fr. Spruill said. The Communion Partners “offers us a way forward for us” to be faithful as priests to their faith and to the church, he said.

This article comes from The Living Church Foundation
http://www.livingchurch.org/

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